We wonder how many of our readers remember the telegram boys? Back in the days before mobile phones, the internet and social media, urgent messages which could not be left to the usual postal delivery service were delivered to doors across the land by telegram boys. Nationally, the telegraph service was launched in 1846 and a network of local centres was established.

In Leicester, the United Kingdom Electric Telegraph Company opened an office in Hotel Street, in March 1864. The first recorded messenger in Leicester was Walter Smith, who was born in 1862 and started work in 1875. While a visit from a telegram boy was often considered an exciting event in many households, during the First and Second world wars their arrival in a street would be met with dread among the residents as they were usually bringing news of death or injury on the battlefields.

In the 1950s, the telegraph writing room was on the top floor of the General Post Office’s Bishop Street building and there was a pneumatic tube system in which the telegrams were dropped when they were ready to be handed to a messenger. The booking out officer would then sort them into different areas of the city and the boys would be sent out. Life as a telegram boy meant having to know the city’s streets backwards.

Read More

The boys mainly used bicycles to get around, although there were some motorbikes. After their stint as telegram boys, the lads went on to become postmen or sorting and telegraph clerks, sending the messages down for the new telegram boys to take out around the city. The service finally came to an end in 1982, having been superseded by the telephone system. The photo shows a group of Leicester telegram boys in 1956. The lads on the back row have been identified as, from left, McDonald, Smith, Pick, Bradshaw, Seaton, Watley and Taylor.